Steve Oakes

The influence of the musicscape within service environments

A literature review of relevant empirical research examining the influence of background music within the context of service environments is presented. Studies revealing significant relationships between specific musical variables and desired consumer behavioural outcomes are displayed in a visual framework entitled the Musicscape. This framework draws on Bitner’s model of the Servicescape, which highlights music as just one of a range of ambient conditions influencing behaviour. The Musicscape provides an extended version of Bitner’s Servicescape model by focusing in detail on just one of these elements, the musical variable. Additional figures demonstrate an even more focused breakdown of Musicscape interactions by including arrows which identify the direction of significant relationships revealed in empirical studies. The framework portrays in visual terms the inherent complexity of attempts to influence response and subsequent behaviour by using music within a service environment.

Evaluating Empirical Research into Music in Advertising: A Congruity Perspective

ABSTRACT This research provides a review and analysis of empirical studies focusing upon cognitive and affective response to music in advertising. It draws together an apparently disparate literature to reach conclusions that will be valuable to advertising practitioners and academics. Findings are categorized by introducing 10 original definitions of music/advertising congruity (score, mood, repetition, association, valence, semantic, genre, image, tempo, and timbre). This highlights the emergence of a coherent pattern in which increased music/advertising congruity contributes synergistically to communications effectiveness by enhancing purchase intent, brand attitude, recall facilitation, and affective response. However, additional evidence indicates that future research should assess the benefits of using more artfully incongruous musical stimuli.

Demographic and sponsorship considerations for jazz and classical music festivals.

This article highlights the need for enhanced managerial awareness of the demographic profile of the audience for arts festivals. More specifically, comparison is drawn between classical music and jazz audiences at major UK festivals in order to highlight the appropriateness of a strategic fit between the demographics of music festival patrons and sponsoring organisation target segments. The potential demand for increased cross-selling of other live entertainment services is examined, and factors impacting upon accurate and erroneous recall of festival sponsor are explored.

Reviewing congruity effects in the service environment musicscape

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a literature review that highlights significant findings from empirical research examining the impact of music within various real and simulated service environments.Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the results of studies that have manipulated specific musical variables (genre, tempo, volume, and liking), and attempts to identify consistent patterns of findings to guide managers and researchers. The studies focus upon a range of dependent variables including evaluation of the environment, perceived wait and stay duration, consumption speed, affective response, and spending. Possible explanations for apparently inconsistent findings are discussed.Findings – A variety of studies reveal the positive influence of musical congruity upon desired outcomes. Future research proposals identify the need to examine defining‐attribute and prototype theories of musical congruity.Originality/value – The review highlights a range of implications drawn from...

Using music to influence cognitive and affective responses in queues of low and high crowd density

Within the context of an undergraduate registration queue, this study confirmed perceived wait duration to be a significant, positive function of the tempo of background music, and a significant, negative function of musical liking. In addition, it identified how the presence of music significantly reduced mean perceived duration estimates. Slow-tempo music produced significantly more positive affective responses than fast-tempo music in terms of satisfaction, relaxation, and positive disconfirmation of expectations of wait duration. The presence of music enhanced positive affective response with low crowd density, but diminished it with high crowd density. Musical liking significantly enhanced positive affective responses.

Profiling the jazz festival audience

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to attempt to provide a detailed profile of the jazz festival audience in terms of age, gender, degree qualifications, home ownership levels, newspaper readership, frequency of attending live jazz performances, interest in attending other festivals and CD purchase behaviour. In addition, it seeks to examine the cultural diversity of improvisation.Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were collected from patrons at the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival in order to establish the demographic profile of the jazz audience and distinguish between two broad categories of jazz fan (modern and hybrid). Hybrid jazz fans are categorised as those purchasing traditional/mainstream jazz CDs who may also purchase modern jazz CDs, thus distinguishing them from exclusively modern jazz fans who do not purchase traditional/mainstream jazz CDs.Findings – Results identified a statistically significant difference between modern and hybrid jazz fans in terms of gender profile, new...

Accounting and marketing communications in arts engagement: A discourse analysis

Abstract Roles of accounting and marketing communications in official documents concerned with widening arts engagement in England are examined. Four discourses are identified in a framework as interpretive lenses: metaphysical, modern, postmodern and post-metaphysical. Accounting and marketing communications were associated with all four discourses to some degree. However, accounting was primarily conceptualised by the authors of the documents as a modern discourse, whilst they primarily portrayed marketing communications as a purveyor of postmodern and post-metaphysical discourses. Accounting and marketing communications demonstrated ambiguity and overlapping roles in attempts to legitimise frequently contradictory positions, thus reflecting a Habermasian tension between facts and norms.

Conceptualising the Management and Consumption of Live Music in Urban Space

This paper examines how live music performed outdoors contributes to an overall urban servicescape capable of transforming perceptions of urban environments. A broad spectrum of outdoor musical performance is discussed ranging from major festivals to busking. The benefits of live music in urban space are highlighted in terms of benefits to the local economy and widening arts engagement. Key issues are discussed within the context of the wider place marketing literature, and it is proposed that the role of music in the marketing of specifically urban places may be conceptualized in terms of three distinct continua – managed/spontaneous, spectacular/mundane, and exclusive/inclusive. As jazz has been consistently identified as an urban genre, each continuum is discussed with reference to jazz performances within the context of a specific urban space – St. Ann’s Square in Manchester

Web-based forums and metaphysical branding

Abstract This paper introduces metaphysical branding as an original, overarching concept binding together discrete data themes when analysing online evaluation of the best-selling album in jazz history – Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. There are five constituent elements of metaphysical branding arising from the data (rite of passage, believers, non-believers, self-improvement, and ritual). The paper uses a netnographic approach involving analysis of online textual discourse posted on a music-rating website. Postings indicate that consumers are not just passively responding to marketing communications, but are actively co-creating transcendent meaning. Dissemination of quasi-religious motifs invests Kind of Blue with self-perpetuating, life-cycle extending meanings. Metaphysical branding has potential applications in the marketing of goods and services requiring prolonged cognitive effort in striving for aspirational self-improvement (e.g. through pursuit of the arts or university education) or prolonged dedication and devotion (e.g. to a sports team).

Freedom and constraint in the empowerment as jazz metaphor

This paper assesses the cultural diversity of improvisation. More specifically, it focuses upon the empowerment as jazz metaphor by highlighting a two-way process considering what marketers (including managers and empowered direct contact staff) and improvising jazz musicians can learn from each other. It examines the apparently polarized concepts of freedom and constraint by identifying how jazz guitarists differ on a hypothetical continuum in terms of the divergence of their performances, as demonstrated by the level of preconceived structuring and pre-composition evident in their work. The metaphorical link highlights the value of making scripted responses appear more customized and spontaneous in order to create the impression of a more personalized service encounter. It urges increased opportunities for employees to be creative and imaginative, but considers the extent to which the freedom to make real-time decisions may be a nebulous and partially illusory ideal for both the empowered service provider and the improvising jazz musician.